Iraq after Saddam
Alexander Rose
National Post
Saddam Hussein, now 63, is reportedly ailing with lymphatic cancer and may die. Like some Shakespearean history play, his courtiers, servants and family are plotting and murdering and betraying in the ruthless struggle to succeed the king.
The likeliest candidate is one of his two sons, Uday and Qusay, or perhaps one of their uncles. Family life in Baghdad's presidential palace resembling less the Brady Bunch than the imperial Ottoman court -- where eunuchs strangled a new sultan's siblings with silken cords -- whoever next rules Iraq will be as dogged and ruthless as its current tyrant.
Of Saddam's two sons, 35-year-old Uday -- a drunken and stupid lout whose hobbies include beating relatives to death at parties, collecting cars (1,600 at last count), smuggling oil for daddy and raping (then killing) the help -- would end up with a bullet in the back of the head fairly soon after assuming power. The assassin would probably be an ambitious army general, who could set himself up as Saddam Mark II, thereby continuing Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical program. Qusay, the younger brother, is cleverer and more cunning. That is why he has been put in charge of the security, intelligence and military apparatus, as well as the Presidential Guard. (Uday got the chairmanship of the Iraqi Olympic committee, whose building has torture chambers in the basement.) Still, there is always the chance a Kurdish or Shi'ite separatist group will get him.
Sadly, post-Saddam Iraq will almost certainly be a violent, lawless and aggressive state run by Ba'athist republicans. A small but distinct possibility exists, however, that with adequate CIA funding, training and arming of a variety of opposition groups sheltering under the umbrella of the democratically minded Iraqi National Congress, U.S.-backed proxies could overthrow the regime, especially during any confusion following Saddam's death.
In this instance, the opportunity would arise to rehabilitate Iraq -- and in a far broader and more permanent sense than simply replacing its leader with another of similar stripe. Such rehabilitation would entail a thorough makeover and a purge of the body politic's more toxic elements, such as Saddam's sinister Ba'athist functionaries, the men who directed the state's terror and liquidation agencies, and those primarily responsible for the illegal acquisition and development of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
In other words, a drastic sort of "de-Nazification" of Iraq under a Middle Eastern Konrad Adenauer would be most helpful, demonstrating to the people that the new government really was new. Once the initial bout had been completed, a truth and reconciliation commission -- like those of South Africa or Chile -- could help the transition to a civil society.
It's the "civil society" bit that is the most difficult to effect. Every institution and organization in Iraq is run by gangsters. In post-Saddam Iraq, justice, banking, education, health care, the oil industry, even the administration of the sewage system would all need to be drastically reformed. The entire political system would have to be dismantled, then reconstructed using such imported materials as democratic representation and public accountability. In order to keep Iraq united -- though it is tempting to partition it into a northern Kurdistan, a central Sunni state and a Shi'ite south, greedy neighbours such as Iran would sweep in -- a federal structure would doubtlessly be on the cards. The restoration of a constitutional monarch (to fulfil the duties of an apolitical head of state) alongside the establishment of parliamentary democracy could do much to attract the allegiance of warring Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds. For instance, the accession of King Juan Carlos after Franco's death inestimably aided Spain's peaceful and unified evolution.
The last king of Iraq, assassinated by revolutionaries in 1958, was Faisal II, who, being of the venerated Hashemite dynasty, could trace his ancestry back to the Prophet Muhammad. Today, under King Abdullah, the Hashemites rule Jordan. An ideal candidate for the Iraqi job would be his well-respected and dynamic uncle, Prince Hassan, who until King Hussein's death last year served as heir.
Even if, like the late President Hafez al-Assad of Syria, who was reportedly "dying" for 20 years, Saddam hangs in there for quite a while, once he starts trailing blood, he is finished. We should prepare our plans now. |
